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Andy, the disembodied hands of Nicole, and Tron came onscreen for a Fun DevStream. Later joined by Romain who ended up feeding Tron’s corpse to the Ghoul that ate his cat.

No BIG announcements today, but we were teased with a “Watch out for next week…!” from Andy. That was all he was authorized to say by the Funcom Chief Marketing Manager in Oslo. (We hear the CMO is pretty scary!)

Something brought up is that they are looking at the New Agent Acquisition Rate. they aren’t touching it just yet, but they hear us!

Something they ARE doing, is giving everyone a second agent: Lydia Darling. She’s 19 years old, and a Witch/Socialite. Apparently she is possessed by her grandmother…? We’ll find out more when she is released to us. (Don’t recall if they said WHEN she will come out, so be patient!)

They are adding the Agent Support to the Top Bar.

Adding Agent Support to the Build Manager.

They are looking to coordinate the Weekend Events with the Agent network.

And they are also going to look at being able to review new missions while your agents are already out in the field.

Suggestion made to add Player Characters to the Agent Network. Romain is open to the idea since the Player characters ARE a part of the TSW/SWL Universe!

The Winners of the “Beyond the Veil” Podcast Agent Art competition announced and shown on stream! Go watch it! They are AMAZING works!

Andy is Joined by Andrew Riker (sp?), one of the systems designers for SWL!

And a Random Nicole joins the battle…!

Josh the Producer says this is coming out Next Week!

One of the reasons they wanted to do this was to give us another avenue to help progress our characters.

Another reason, is it will help expand the storyline to places that our characters have NOT been to in game. The Secret World is the ENTIRE World, so there are things that are happening in other places as well, and Agent-Farmville will help tell some of those other stories.

Agent-Farmville will start once you hit Faction Rank 3, which should be around level 15. So once you start gathering Loot Lanterns, you get to be a Handler of your own Network of Agents!

Once this goes live, if you are level 15+, you will get an SMS from your Faction handler starting you on Agent Farmville.

Certain Agents can only be earned from specific Zones and Activities.

Agent Boosters will be available for Aurum.

Boosters can contain Gear or Dossiers.

You will not be able to get anything special for Aurum. All things you can get buy using Aurum are available by doing In Game things. BUT… You cannot get all the things by using Aurum! To get everything, you MUST do the in game things! (I like this philosophy..!)

NEW CURRENCY – HEXCOINS – If you get something through the Aurum boosters that you don’t like or it’s a duplicate of something you already have, you can sell them to any vendor and you’ll get Hexcoins. (Also option to sell on AH for Marks, I think!)

There will be a new Shady Vendor in Mall-gartha (At the boarded up area we’ve all been wondering what it was for…!) and he will be selling dossiers and gear bags for the Hexcoin currency.

Use your “P” Key to open the Agent Network UI. Because….. “P” is for Play…?

First Column is your Open Mission Slots. You start with one open Slot, with the second slot opening up after you recruit a second Agent. Third Mission slot is for Patrons. 4th and 5th slots will open at a later time based on things you do within the Agent system.

Click on the Agents and you’ll get a Dossier on them explaining some of their Background, and what they can do for you.

Agent Carter…. Not that one… the other one!

Agent Carter…. Not that one… the other one!

Agent Stats appear to be Prowess, Adaptability, and Ingenuity.

Agents can carry one gear item. These gear items will help give the Agent a Buff of some sort to help them on specific missions.

Gear can be used to affect an Agent’s Affinity.

Gear is not Consumed upon use.

Gear can be sold on the AH unless you equip it.

The bottom of the Dossier is the “Agent Support Ability” tells you what the Agent can give you for a Buff. Carter’s are +490 Health at level 25, and +7% Blood Magic Damage at level 50. (These refer to the Agent’s level)

Eventually, you can unlock 3 Support Agent slots, giving you 6 buffs!

Agent’s Maximum Level is 50, just like Player Characters. This brings to mind if we ever get a level cap increase, if the agents level will increase as well? I would think so.

TRAITS – Agents will get up to 2 traits that can help them complete missions. Carter’s Traits allow her to do well in Supernatural Missions and missions that allow her to make use of her Powers. Match the traits on an agent to the appropriate mission. (NOTE – The graphic shoes a faint outline of a possible third trait slot. It was noted there are Special Shiny agents, like foil cards. My guess is that the special Shiny versions will make use of that third slot. Keep in mind this is only a Guess!)

When searching your Roster, you can use a Filter to display specific agents.

Apologies on screen clarity, this is the quality of the DevStream that I had.

When Choosing a mission, you will see the Affinity % that each agent has for that specific Mission. Choose wisely!

Available Missions“Time is Money, Friend!”“Click Me!”

When turning in the missions, you will get one of the following ratings:

Complete – You did it, and you learned something and earned exp, but probably not well enough to have found any items.

Successful – Maybe found an extra bit of intel that wasn’t expected.

Outstanding – Wesley Crusher Saves the Day!

Resources are consumed per the Requirements of the mission you choose. Resources available are as follows:

Intel

Supplies

Assets

Usually, if you use one resource, you will earn one of the other 2.

There have been over 200 missions written for this!

Each mission has it’s own flavor text for each agent depending on how well they perform.

Missions have individual timers to show how long they will be available and until a new mission will be available in that slot.

Question from the audience – How long will it take to level an individual agent up to 50?

Survey says….! A while… BUT…! Here’s the thing, as you level your first agents, you will gain ‘Gear’ that will help your next agents meet requirements and gain EXP Faster. Sounds like we’ll just have to wait and see.

There are a total of 40 total available Agents.

Inventory – The Inventory shown is specifically set for your Agents, but if you run out of space on the Agent Network screen, it will overflow into your regular inventory.

From Savage Coast onwards, Action/Investigation missions will grant you a chance at an Agent Dossier upon completion.

Certain Achievements will also grant Dossiers

Elite Dungeons

Lairs

Scenarios

Raid Finder

Each Type of activity that grants Dossiers, will grant a dossier that is good for that type of activity. So if you have trouble doing Lairs or Scenarios, but you like to do Dungeons, you can trade the dossiers you get from dungeons with someone that does a different activity that you don’t get to do often.

There will be agent specific Achievements! (MOAR CHEEVO POINTS PLZ!)

Sorry Massack – There is no Doki-Doki Agent Dating System in the works. 🙁

Carter’s ‘Blood Magic Damage’ isn’t the only weapon type that gets a bonus. Each weapon type will have an agent that grants a bonus for it.

There are ‘Rumors’ *cough cough* of Agents that are quite ‘Shiny’… like ‘Foil Card Agents.’ They will also have a special Appearance in your Roster. Will have to wait and see what they do and what makes them special. (I have already noted the possibility that they will have a third Trait available to them! This is merely supposition on my part! So Don’t sue me if I’m wrong!)

SPECIAL MISSION – Unlock after your First Actual Mission!

All agents will have a 100% chance to complete it.

The idea is to make sure that everyone can get something out of Agent Farmville

Agent missions can be completed even while you are offline.

There will be no App at this time due to lack of resources.

Agent Farmville will expand later on as new content releases.

The added Buffs are not being taken into account for actual content. But things will be adjusted if things break as a result.

Next DevStream on the 9th of March. – LOTS TO TALK ABOUT being Promised!

NIFLHEIM! Land of Frost and Ice…! And the Legendary Home of Krampus and Hel in the Secret World!

This is one of my favorite holiday events from TSW. There is a lot to do if you want to see it all here. First, you have to coordinate gathering 8 items to bring with you to Niflheim. You can get these items by killing Krampus in each of the 8 zones from the base game:

Kingsmouth – Lump of Coal

Savage Coast – Dead Yew Branch

Blue Mountain – Pouch of Soil

Scorched Desert – Wolf Fang

City of the Sun God – Foul Whiskey Bottle

Besieged Farmlands – Corpse Maggots

Shadowy Forest – Severed Hand*

Carpathian Fangs – Snake Skin

*= The Severed Hand needs to Be disassembled into 5x Nails. You will only use one of the Nails per Summons, so I recommend gathering 5x of all the other components so you can summon her 5 times!

There is a 9th item you need for the summon, but you get it in Niflheim from the Krampus Boss. I’ll go over that im a moment.

So how do you get there…?

I’m glad you asked that, Chuck! I’m sure, at some point you’ll have noticed that once you’ve attacked a Krampus, and get him below half health, he will run away and try to escape through a Portal.

FINISH HIM!

Kill him before he can jump through it and you can then use the portal to enter Niflheim!

Once inside, you’ll be greeted by a number of groups of Krampus, and they should be easy enough to solo down if you want. There is also a small charlie Brown Christmas tree about 50 feet down the entry hall, on the left hand side. You should get a yellow reticle (if you have it showing) to indicate you can ‘Use’ this tree. hit your Activate/Use key and a Lore will spring up above it! (See first picture in this post!)

Something else you might notice by now, is that you have the ‘Equal Footing’ Buff. The first clue is that you suddenly have 150K health! So Soloing all the Krampus in here shouldn’t be a problem. Once you’ve killed all these little Krampus, a BIG Krampus spawns in the middle! This Krampus Boss is also soloable, just make sure you get out of his AOE abilities. He will drop your Last item needed to Summon Hel, ‘Horns of Krampus’.

Ok, so what do we do with all these things?

Now you’re ready to summon Hel! Open the picture below and activate each item from your Mission Inventory bag near the indicated area.

The things we do for Loot….!

As each section is activated, it will glow, or in the case of the Pillars, a Torch will be lit. I usually arrange the items in my bags so all the pillars are done first from left to right, and then the inner items are ordered the same as they are here, and then use the Horns of Krampus last so I’ll be right next to where Hel Spawns. But if the game doesn’t limit you on order, do them anyway you want! You do you, Boo!

Now, before you activate that last Component, ask yourself: “What difficulty do I want to do this at?” This is a thing! There are two difficulties for her: E1 and E5. Don’t worry too much about gear here, remember, you have the Equal Footing Buff! So it’s more a matter of how well can you dance? If you think you can handle the E5 difficulty, there is a stone Bench near the Arena that you can ‘Use’ to Activate Hard Mode.

So Now that I have this Goddess of the Underworld, what do I do with her?

I should probably also note here, that Hel is a Group fight! You will want to have people with you! You want someone to act as a tank, and someone to act as a healer, and then 3 DPS to kick her Arse back to the Underworld!

Phase 1 – Now I can’t speak for the E5 difficulty level, but On E1, this is how it goes: Hel will Spawn in the middle of the Floor, and she does not move. If you are too far away, she will attack you with a Ranged Attack. It doesn’t hurt MUCH, but it will add up if you don’t have a healer.

From here on out, I have ‘Phase Numbers’, but these can happen in pretty much whatever order she wants to.

Phase 2 – She will split into 4 copies of herself, and the copies will continue attacking you at range from each of the four pillars in the middle of the floor. Kill each of the copies before the end of her cast timer to avoid… well tell you the truth I’m not sure what the cast does… I haven’t seen it go off yet. >.> Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s supposed to do bad things to you and your party, so just kill her before it goes off!

Split up and Send a DPS to each of the copies and the Tank can take the last one. Any DPS that finishes their’s first, can come help the tank. Again, on E1 this goes pretty quick, but I’m sure they have more health on E5, making them harder to kill before her cast completes.

[UPDATE: Actually, I just ran this after I posted this, and Her Cast is called ‘Hel on Earth’ and the Debuff only says that…. ‘Hel on Earth’. You do seem to take increased damage the more stacks of this you have on you. So make sure your Healer is aware!]

Phase 3 – She will teleport in one of the Compass directions from the middle, out to near the wall. From this place, she will send a HUGE gust of Freezing Wind toward you, and you HAVE to get behind one of the pillars ASAP so you don’t get caught out in the open. And believe me, no matter the difficulty, you WANT to be SNUG up close to the pillar! If you are standing like 5 feet behind it, you WILL be affected by the wind. Get Close. Cuddle Pile behind that pillar!

Something else to mention, you aren’t trying to keep Hel 180° opposite from you on the other side of the pillar. You want to be on the compass point 180° from the direction the wind is coming from. Important distinction. I’ve seen more than enough videos and party members try to keep Hel 180° opposite from them and die to the wind. It’s the WIND you need to be afraid of… not her.

Phase 2.5 – (I never said I was good at making a reference index!) This is a harder version of Phase 2. Instead of making only 4 copies of herself and standing within the boundaries of the pillars, Now she makes 8 copies of herself, 2 per compass point, and will be out beyond the pillars near the walls. Again, spit the DPS up and kill them before her cast goes off or I’m sure something awful will happen! On E1, they tend to die pretty easily, but on E5, I’m sure they will have more health and be harder to take down.

Phase 4 – THIS is the Phase where she casts that Light/Dark thing that you have to throw the snowball for the achievement. She will cast this and Channel it giving everyone in the party a random Light or Dark symbol over your head. The symbol itself is sometimes confusing and you can get mixed up which side you need to be on fairly easily. The trick is to NOT look at the face of the symbol over your head, but rather the swirly cloud that is around the symbol.

Hel will always start this ability facing South (The direction you came from the portal). If you are facing her, the Light side will always be ON YOUR LEFT (Her right), and the Dark side will be ON YOUR RIGHT (Her left). Match the Cloud color of your symbol to the Light/Dark side of the floor as appropriate. As she channels, she will turn in a random direction and the light/dark sides of the floor turn with her. WATCH HER LEG THAT IS CLOSEST TO YOU and turn with it!

ACHIEVEMENT TIME!

“Sucking at Something is the First Step in becoming Sorta Good at something…”

“Snowball’s Chance in Hell” – You need to have the achievement for scoring 75 points in a snowball fight and then go buy your Snowball Emote Item from the Guy in Mall-gartha. I recommend placing this emote on your Quick action bar before the fight begins. (Heck, probably before you even step foot in Nifelheim!)

[UPDATE: There are 2 Snowball Emotes that you can use to get this achievement – The First comes from Dr Caligari in Mall-gartha for completing the Snowball Fight Achievement.

What Is he a Doctor OF., anyway..?

The Second is the Emote that you got on the first day of the Event Rewards. BUT, you can’t just type /snowball to make it work. You Have to use it from the Emote Menu:

When in Niflheim, Hit ‘SHIFT + O’ To open the Emote Window, and it will stay open during the fight for you. When she starts casting Light/Dark, hit your Alt Key to get your Mouse pointer, and then click that emote in the menu to get it to work!]

If you are lucky, and you start off on the correct side of the floor and she turns in a favorable direction for you, you can then hit your Quick Action that you assigned to the Snowball, and hit her with it before she finishes her channel. You should then get your notification that you got your achievement!

If, however, you are not lucky enough to get a favorable spin, hopefully, your Healer can keep you up since if you aren’t on the same side as the Light/Dark symbol over your head, you will take a LOT of damage! (And probably die… so there is that.) E5 will definitely cause more damage than E1, so act accordingly.

There’s another achievement you can get in here, “The Two-Faced Mother.” Remember when she splits up and I said to klil all her copies before she finishes her cast? Yeah, don’t. Let her do it. Let her finish her cast each time, and I think I heard the magic number was 3 stacks of the debuff she casts. Kill her with three stacks of this Debuff, and you will get this achievement as well. Don’t die during the fight, or you’ll lose your stacks, and then lose your achievement. Again, I’m still not entirely sure exactly what this debuff does, but I think it adds extra damage the higher it gets. On E5, you may want to time getting the last stack to how low she is on her health so you have less time with stacks to kill her.

Lastly, there’s the Icy Claws! These were a ‘Hot Item’ last year (No pun intended). What you need to so is hit her with a snowball during her Light/Dark Phase, until she ‘Flinches’. You will notice she will stop her channeling and wobble back and forth for a few seconds, stunned. If this happens, TAKE HER DOWN!!! Once you’ve made her flinch, she WILL drop the Icy Claws for you!

This was doable on Elite, and NM modes in TSW, so it shouldn’t matter what difficulty you have it set to in SWL. Something to watch for when you throw your snowball, is a message at the top of the screen that says it had no effect. It’s hard to see, being white text on a light, frosty blue background. But it’s there.

Again, you have to hit her with the snowball when she’s starting her channel of Light/Dark Phase. If your throw doesn’t have any effect, just hang out and let her go through her phases until she does the Light/Dark again. Then try again. There is no set time limit for this fight to take place. So whittle down her health and then stop DPS and let her do her thing until you get the right result. If you are lucky, it can happen in 2-3 shots. But in TSW, we had rounds where it took us over a dozen attempts to finally get her to flinch. Be prepared to let this fight go for a while if you REALLY want the claws!

I am not sure how many claws will drop. In TSW, there was one set and we had to coordinate who got them or it was an open roll. But with the Personalized Loot system in SWL, everyone may be able to get them. Someone drop me a line if you know!

[UPDATE: Icy Claws Drops for Everyone in the Party! And this is Doable in E1! Good luck out there!]

LOOT!

So what else do we get? Well for E1 at least, you’ll get a Lore item (Hopefully the last one you need to complete the Krampusnacht Lore section) and a Blue Loot Bag. Inside the Loot bag is 1200 Anima Shards and a ‘Festive Gift Bag’. The Contents of the Festive Gift bag is random and I won’t bother trying to list all the things you can get out of it. Basically, more cosmetics. I think the bags themselves are trade-able, so you can put them on the AH if you like. But then you won’t have the chance to get some Nifty Cosmetics that we all crave!

Again, I can’t talk for the E5 crowd, since I’m a Filthy Casual. If anyone knows if what you get is better, on E5, drop me a line in the comments below. Or you can catch me on twitter, or the FunCom Discord.

That about wraps it up. Hopefully something here was helpful for you. again, let me know if you have any info I may have missed, or if you just want to say hello! Thank you for stopping by! And as always, I hope to see you in the Secret World!

It’s Friday! Krampusnacht is in full swing! So you know what that means! DEV STREAM SHENANIGANS!

Happy Holidays, FunCom Dev-Style!

This isn’t much of an Informational stream. Mostly just having some fun.

Nicole has Evolved to SynoSaur!

A few things that did come up:

Cargo Container keys were Nerfed because the Containers were giving better rewards than Mid Level Dungeons. The reason they are doing it this way is “When you have an Outlier, you address the outlier first.” Then once everything is on an even keel, you can take a step back and see what other changes can be made. So that’s where it stands right now, is they are letting it stand and watching the numbers and looking to see what other changes they can make in the future.

Thank you for the explanation!

(Still not too happy about it, but it makes some kind of sense. )

JOSH IS BACK! Welcome Back Scrivnomancer!

I still want your hat. Just sayin’!

Names can now be changed for Aurum. This included the First and last names as well as your Nickname!

Quick Showing of Plastic Surgeon and barber.

BIG THANK YOU to Tron and Glaucon for getting this completed before Christmas!

I don’t think that’s how this works, Andy….

Quick Look at Nifelheim. Andy almost Soloed Hel, but was rushing himself and died to the Bad.

Undocumented Change in the latest patch, they increased the heat generation of 3 abilities for Elementalism. Trying to make it easier to keep your heat up.

Then Andy went to Seoul Fight Club and we got to see his TRUE FORM:

The combat logs show his Leet DPS!

And a Quick look at the TilTease™ from twitter:

https://twitter.com/RomainAmiel/status/941707018154532866

Tron joined the stream for a short while at some point. Shenanigans was had. And Josh couldn’t say a thing on stream to keep him from releasing the Curse of Romain.

And that’s about the Gist of it! This will be their last stream of the year. Everyone will be on holiday until after the new year. They will keep tabs on social media, but for the most part it’s Happy Holidays to the FunCom Team!

Thank you to FunCom for all for the year’s excitement and news and fun! And Thank YOU all for being a part of it! This game wouldn’t be here without all of the players in this community that help support it!

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you all have a great Holiday, whatever you may practice! Don’t get caught by any Krampus! And as always, I hope to see you in the Secret World!

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I failed to do one of these for Samhain. Just wasn’t feeling it at the time and no one seemed to be screaming for one. But THIS TIME…. we get the event rewards on ALL our characters! Got an alt? Got 3 alts? Got a full stable of characters? LOG THEM ALL IN ‘CAUSE THEY ARE ELIGIBLE FOR THE DAILY EVENT REWARDS!

ALL THE LOOT…! On ALL THE ALTS!

So there’s 15 days worth of Loot, and then 6 days of Filler. Each day you log in, on each character on your account, you can get a special Item, and a Malevolent Snowflake, up to 15 days. On Days 16 through 21, all you get is the Snowflake. These Daily Event Rewards reset at the same time as your normal Daily Rewards and the Daily Challenges, 2am EST/11pm PST. (Or whatever your local time zone translates these times to.)

PLEASE NOTE: If you log into a character and the Holiday Event Reward Calendar does not pop up, Just click the little ‘Gift’ icon in your Top-Bar and it should appear for you to claim!

This Little Teeny Gift looking icon…!

The Snowflakes are a special loot bag that you can only open after defeating the Holiday Boss in the Public Raid Platform on the Main Mall-gartha platform. This ‘Super-Hel’ Raid boss runs at the top of each hour. Once you have Defeated Super-Hel, you will have a 10 minute buff that will allow you to open the Snowflake to get what’s inside!

First off, here’s a list of the Main items you get each day, from Day 1 through Day 15:

Figuros Padurii (Pet) + Malevolent Snowflake

5000 Anima Shards + Malevolent Snowflake

Purified Talisman Distillate (1600cc) + Malevolent Snowflake

Purified Weapon Distillate (1600cc) + Malevolent Snowflake

Orochi Hovertech Snowboard** + Malevolent Snowflake

25 AP + Malevolent Snowflake

30 SP + Malevolent Snowflake

7500 Anima Shards

Purified Weapon Distillate (2000cc) + Malevolent Snowflake

Weapon Fusion Catalyst (Epic) + Malevolent Snowflake

Purified Talisman Distillate (2000cc) + Malevolent Snowflake

30 AP + Malevolent Snowflake

35 SP + Malevolent Snowflake

10,000 Anima Shards + Malevolent Snowflake

Glyph Anima Imbuer + Malevolent Snowflake

Malevolent Snowflake

Malevolent Snowflake

Malevolent Snowflake

Malevolent Snowflake

Malevolent Snowflake

** = If you already have the Orochi Hovertech Snowboard, you will be given 2000 Anima Shards when you try to add it to your Sprint Inventory.ss

As for the contents of the Malevolent Snowflakes, they seem to be scripted to give the same thing in order each day. So far I have seen the following:

*= This emote is different from the Snowball Emote you get for the Snowball Fights Achievement. This emote seems to be just the motion of throwing a snowball, but you don’t see an actual snowball. (Or at least I don’t.)

[UPDATE: I THINK the /snowball emote that you type in chat may have already been there, which is why it doesn’t throw a snowball. instead, open your EMOTE Tab by typing “SHIFT + O” and then find the Snowball emote there and it will throw a snowball at your target!]

***= Since I Had some of these rewards on my female characters, i ended up skipping a day or items here and there. Thank you to Aeryl on the SWL Discord for updating me on what I’d missed!

I will update this each day as I see new things awarded, so be sure to come back and check the updated list!

[UPDATE AGAIN: After Day 15 od opening Malevolent Snowflakes, you seem to get 2000 Anima Shards. So once you get the Flightless Reindeer, you pretty much have everything.]

Another thing to note is if for some reason you only have time to claim your Daily Snowflake, and don’t have time to do the Hourly Raid to open it, the Malevolent Snowflakes WILL STACK in your inventory! AND, once you complete a Raid and you come out and have opened your Snowflake, you can usually turn around and run a second one, or log onto an alt to run a second one before the entrance closes.

BE WARNED: If you get into a Super-Hel Raid and take your sweet time getting to the fight, you will get ported out, and you will get a Deserter Debuff so you won’t be able to reenter until the next hour’s raid happens. (Spoken from experience!)

That’s it for tonight. I think that covers the basics at least. I plan to do another post tomorrow on the Holiday Nifelheim instances and Krampus hunting and how to summon Hel in Nifelheim! Until then, Happy Krampusnacht! And as usual, I hope to see you in, the Secret World!

Wait, what do you mean, “What is Krampusnacht?” It’s the Secret World’s Winter Holiday Event!

When does it start? This Tuesday, December 12, after the server restarts. (Check the SWL website/Redit/Discord/Twitter for your local times.)

What can we expect? Well, Daily login event rewards that you can get on ALL YOUR ALTS! FINALLY!!1! No longer will you have to choose just one character to receive the Daily Event Rewards for, but you can log into each character on your account and get an Awesome Holiday Event Reward!

What kind of rewards will we get? That’s uh…. a very good question… I’ll have to get back to you on that. Whatever we do get, I’ll have to do another Advent Calendar post to keep up with the items on a daily basis. In any case, I can’t thank FunCom enough for finally getting past the technical hurdles to enable this!

So, is that it? No! There’s also the actual event! There hasn’t been a preview of the event, that I know of, but what I can do is give you a brief rundown on the old TSW version of Krampusnacht.

With luck, they will bring back the Snowball fight! There was a nifty holiday event bag that we got that had a chance to give us a ‘Pile of Snowballs’ item that would allow us to throw down and have a snowball fight anywhere! If you scored a certain amount of points, you would be granted a Snowball Emote so you can throw a snowball at anyone at anytime, anywhere! (Can’t wait to get mine back!) It’s also used for another achievement later.

Krampus, Krampus Everywhere..!

You should be able to find Krampus throughout the game zones. Killing a Krampus in any particular zone will give you a chance for it to drop a special quest item. These quest items will be specific to that zone, so there are 8 different quest items that you will need to acquire. (I don’t believe Kaidan takes part in the Krampus Holidays. Sorry!) With any luck, these will fall into your mission item Inventory. (HINT HINT!)

What do we do with these quest items? Once you have one of each quest item, get a group together, and hunt down another Krampus! (I recommend gathering about 5 sets of items before starting this, so you can do it 5 times in a row.) Once you find the Krampus, attack him until he runs away and follow him. He’ll open a portal and try to escape. Kill him after the portal is opened and before he escapes and now you’ll have your own portal to his home plane of existence, Niflheim!

What’s in Niflheim?

More Krampus. LOTS MORE KRAMPUS! Kill all the Krampus and you’ll get a BIG KRAMPUS to kill! The Big Krampus also drops the last item needed to summon Hel.

Once you’ve killed the Big Boss Krampus, this is where your quest items come into play. Use your quest items at specific points around the room and you’ll summon Hel! Kill Hel for MOAR LOOT!

I recommend using the Horn of Krampus Last for the Summons.

ICY CLAWS

I don’t know if the Icy Claws will be available this year or not, but during last year’s event, this was fun for us to figure out! Remember that Snowball emote I told you about earlier? THIS is where it gets used. The Emote, NOT the Pile of Snowballs. I’m not going to tell you everything about the fight, but at some point, Hel will cast a spell that causes everyone to get Light or Dark affinity, and then the ground will also get light and dark energy. I recommend watching the cloud above the icon over your head when it happens so you get on the right side soonest! The floor will spin and you have to stay on the correct side, or you die. When she starts this, you have to time your /snowball emote just right, and hopefully you can stun her with the snowball. If you are successful in stunning her, she will drop the Icy Claws!

(MINOR ISSUE – Targeting Hel with a Snowball. In TSW we could tab/click target Hel. We can’t do that in SWL. This technicality may void this whole section of the event and they will have to find another way to do the Icy Claws.)

Now, in TSW, you could just fight her until she started trying to cast this spell, and then just back off and stop attacking her so she can continue doing this until someone can finally stun her. It seemed to be pretty random and could take up to a dozen tries if you are REALLY unlucky! Be prepared to let this fight draw out for a while if you are REALLY determined to get the Claws!

The issue here is that in TSW, she dropped one set and we all got to roll on it. SWL however, has individual loot. So if she drops Icy Claws now, does EVERYONE in the group get them? Or does only one person get them kinda like the Blue bag with the kitty at Stonehenge during the Samhain event? We’ll have to wait and see.

FEAST OR FAMINE

In TSW, killing Hel in the Dungeon gave you a chance for her to drop a Dagger named ‘Famine,’ that was used in Summoning Super-Hel in Savage Coast. (Super-Hel is explained in the next segment.)

You could also change the difficulty of Hel in Niflheim by using the Bench near the central arena to initiate Nightmare Mode before you summoned her. SWL has said that E5 was about where the old TSW NM difficulty was, so I’m not sure how hard she will be here. I’m not geared for E5’s yet so hopefully it’s only about E1-2 level or something.

So why would we put her on NM Mode? She’d have, I think, a 100% Chance to drop ‘Famine,’ as opposed to what seemed to be maybe a 10% chance in normal mode.

SUPER-HEL

This was an open World Boss that required tons of people to come out to the Savage Coast and kill her! SWL, however, doesn’t have Open World Bosses like that anymore. Judging by the Samhain event, it looks like Super-Hel can be done in either of two ways:

Every hour at the special portal off the main Mall-gartha platform.

If she does drop ‘Famine’ still, maybe we’ll have to summon her the same way they summon the Lair Bosses on the Public Raid Platform..? Probably at the Holiday platform in any case.

Killing Super-Hel also gave you a chance to get specific clothing items. These would drop in a specific order leading up to Krampus’ horns and finally Hel’s horns! (Crown of Krampus and Crown of Hel, respectively.) What other items will she give us? Distillates? Weapon skins? Again, we’ll have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Super-Hel happens at the top of every hour! No ‘Famine’ Needed!

There should be some other missions and things related to the Event happening, but again, We don’t know the specifics yet. Also, not to forget the new Winter ‘Frost-Bound Cache’ that will be dropping as well. Time to see if we can get some nifty new weapons skins and outfits! I think I heard rumor of a Snowmobile sprint? Don’t quote me on that.

Hopefully this wasn’t too rambling for you all. This was mostly all off the top of my head, remembering things from TSW Holidays past. I know there are all kinds of little things and cosmetics that we could get, but this wasn’t meant to be an end-all-be-all list of everything. Again, check the TSWDB Legacy site for all those tidbits of information!

Thank you for stopping by. Good luck and Have fun with this event! And as always, I hope to see you, in the Secret World!

So there’s a new game that you may have heard about, called Star Wars Battlefront 2. There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding this game for the past couple weeks talking about how content is locked behind pay walls and loot boxes. After receiving so much backlash about this, EA decided they’d drop the requirements for accessing certain content by 75%..! Sounds great, right? But they also limited the currency you could earn in game by 75% as well. Not only that, but they further limited how much you could earn in a single day while playing single player. >.<

It’s bad enough that you are paying full price for a AAA title, but then you have content behind lockboxes as well? EA had even come to the point of giving bonuses for people to watch someone else opening lock boxes! “LOOK AT THE NIFTY THINGS YOU CAN GET IF YOU SPEND MOAR MONEY NAO!” I do have to say that I don’t know who got the bonuses, the person opening them in front of others? Or if others that watched got something as well. But either way, this seems Predatory AF!

It got so bad that Disney called EA and told them to fix the problem! So EA ended up pulling loot boxes out of the game entirely, hours before launch! (They also reserved the right to add them back into the game at a later date.)

But that’s not the end of the story.

European governments began looking at ‘Loot boxes’ and how they compared to gambling. And as of yesterday, Belgium and Hawaii (Yes, a US state got into the action too!) have both chimed in and consider the practice to be Gambling! Belgium is looking to introduce legislation to ban this practice in the European Union, and Hawaii Representatives say they are working with other states to do the same here in the US. Check out this video for a better explanation:

(I happen to like this guy’s channel and he’s had a lot of coverage on this whole loot box issue, check out his other videos if you got time.)

This won’t just affect Battlefront 2, but any and all games that feature a ‘Chance’ to get something good. This includes our Beloved SWL ‘Loot Lanterns.’ It’s that element of ‘Chance’ to get Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious gear items, or cosmetics that are ‘MUST HAVES’ that are at the root of this issue.

Cash for Cache keys..?

‘Loot Lanterns’ are a big reason SWL has done so well, and why FunCom has seen their best 3rd quarter in history. But depending on what legislation goes through, these may change dramatically. Or they could see only minor changes. Again, it depends on what the legislation actually looks like when it comes down the pike.

I don’t see much issue with how our Loot Lanterns are done in game, but then again, I’m mid in my 40’s and have a stable job and know how to limit my spending (for the most part). I’m also aware that not everyone will be as ‘well adjusted’ to this sort of thing, and it can become a slippery slope for them.

What changes would I like to see if it comes down to it? Truth to tell, I’m not a game designer. Nor am I actually involved in the gaming industry, outside of this blog and some IC twitter accounts. But looking at this from an outside perspective, once you are level 15 you will be inundated with these caches! But the way to open them is through a special key. One that while you can purchase the funds to buy a key in game and not spend a dime of real cash, the costs are prohibitive to do so. I think last night I saw that Aurum was going for over 200 Marks each. That’s 20K+ marks to get 1 key. 2 days worth of Challenges to get one key. How many Loot Lanterns will you acquire during that time?

I don’t know about you, but I tend to get a good dozen a day at a minimum! And that temptation to just spend my aurum on keys to open those suckers up is REAL. I’m a filthy casual. My time is limited for progression. And I have 3 50’s to feed! With that said, these daily keys are giving me the biggest boost to my gear progression, so finding a reason to open more of these isn’t that hard to do. Especially when I have hundreds of older Caches in my bank still! And knowing I could just spend a little extra here and there to open more of these to get that extra distillate, or maybe the Cyber Shades for my 3rd alt… it’s a thing!

So how can we change this? We’d have to take the element of chance out of the equation. That seems to be the heart of the Gambling connection. So the type and size of distillates would have to be known ahead of time. And the cosmetics? We’d have to go back to the old style store and just buy the item we want.

Or maybe, at least make them available that way. So maybe we can have each size of Distillate that you can get out of the Caches available in an ingame store for a set Aurum price, along with the cosmetic items, AND still have the caches give you a chance to get them randomly? I’m not sure of having the option to buy something outright along with the random element when opening the Caches would satisfy whatever legislation will be brought down, but it’s an idea. And ideas are what we’ll need soon. How soon? Probably early next year will be when the US Government will get things in place. I’m not sure how fast Belgium or the EU can move, but I’d also figure early next year as well.

My fingers are Crossed that SWL doesn’t get affected much and that Funcom continues to have good returns. This is a game I’ve loved since TSW Beta and want to see the story continue for years to come.

Hopefully EA hasn’t screwed it up for everyone by getting too greedy and pushing it too far. Time will tell.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thank you for stopping by. And as always, I hope to see you in the Secret World!

Today we had TronQuiote join Andy McMan-bun and Dyno-Saur Nicole (I know it’s Spynosaur..!) as we had random Hyjinx in th Seoul Fight Club, and Nicole used Microsoft paint to show why she isn’t on the art team!

PLAYER 4 HAS ENTERED THE ARENA:

Customer Service Manager, Chris Tatem also joined for a few minutes at the beginning to let everyone know that after having some short shifts due to the Plague, his team seems to be catching up once again. If you have any lingering issues, please feel free to let him know how terrible he is on the FunCom Discord.

ELEMENTALISM ADJUSTMENTS:

Elementalism just had some changes happen to it, and they are aware there are some issues persisting, but they are going to wait and watch for a while longer before they decide on further adjustments. So keep playing it, and give them your feedback.

FALL SALE:

The Fall Sale is going on until the 27th! Make sure you check out what’s on sale and Buy Aurum, and Buy Stuff!

Andy has been a Community Manager for 2 years now! Congratulations!

Paricipants of today’s ‘Lair of the Sky Cowboy’ (Andy-Zilla Fight Club Boss) received Dev-Killer T-shirts! (Meanwhile, I was stuck at work…. *sigh*)

WAIT..! SOMETHING USEFUL TODAY?!?!

Winter Cache is being worked on currently and we were given a preview of the new Sword Skin and Outfits!

Winter Cache Preview!

I want to know if the facemask thing will be able to be equipped separately..?

Ok, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve done a DevStream review. Originally, my focus was on upcoming news about the game’s release and major updates, and after launch, I just got caught up in the game itself, among other things. But I still see a lot of traffic from people looking for more information on the game, so I figured it’s time to continue my reviews of the DevStreams.

This is their 1 hour teaser on twitter earlier, and with luck we’ll see what this is all about!

“The Holy Trinity of Tank, DPS, and Heals… When in Balance can save us all!”

Andrew Riker – Lead Systems Designer joining Andy and Nicole today! This is the guy to talk to about balance issues or things you want to see.

Things will be covered are Quality of Life Changes, Elemental changes, Looting, and then they’ll get to the big thing they teased on twitter!

This update is scheduled to come in November, but no date specified yet.

ELEMENTALISM CHANGES

Issues – Early game you tend to overhead before you use your energy, and later game, you are managing cooling more than damage.

Changes – Increasing Heat you lose in cooling abilities and decreasing the heat generated by abilities. Also removing “Heat Bar Flip” when you transition from low heat to high heat modes. the effects are still there, but it removes the delay that happens during that transition.

Crystallized Blaze (Passive) will stay Blaze all the time.

Other passives are getting buffs to add damage in addition to managing your cooling abilities.

Heat level damage Bonus will increase as well! the idea is that it will be harder to reach higher heat levels, so they become more powerful for you!

Eldritch Scourge – something about corruption – I missed this but will review and update this later.

Q&A –

Tanking Weapon Balance – If you combine cooldowns you can forego need for healing. Looking at reducing the length of time certain abilities last so tanks don’t feel as if they don’t need heals or anyone else. The issue is new tanks NEED these abilities.

Will DPS Checks get reduced so that tanks won’t look at the need to go sans heals? This will be something they will look at later.

LOOT –

Currently 3 avenues for progression:

Signets – Lairs

Glyphs – Scenarios

Talismans/Weapons – Dungeons

They will be changing this up somewhat so that you can get some of these things in all three! You will still focus on the same item progression in the above avenues, and have a lesser chance of gaining items from the other two. So if you do scenarios, you’s still get Glyph progression things first, and possibly get a signet or distillates.

In addition, the first 5 chests in a dungeon will be the same as they are now, but the End Boss dungeon chest will be increased.

NOTE – THIS DOES NOT AFFECT STORY MODE DUNGEONS! ELITE DUNGEONS ONLY!

Final Loot Change – New Waist Talismans – Will give new stats that give different effects based on what weapon you are using at that time. These waist talismans will be diluted into the Loot Lantern drops! So when you see the Loot Lanterns dropping, instead of the Cache, you may actually be getting a new Talisman instead! It will be good to have actual GEAR dropping once again!

Empowering Items –

We will now be able to use items that have experience in them already. They will grant 40% of the experience in that item!

Signet and Glyph removal costs based on quality level of the item!

Red background items have had their values buffed!

Equal Footing Buff in the Seoul Fight Club so people can test things how they want.

Patron Benefits – If you log in and get your daily benefits, and THEN become a Patron, they are fixing the ability to get your key and cooldowns and other Patron Benefits

Summonable Vendor coming soon! – Summon a Vendor to your location using an item you can purchase in Agartha.

Faction City and Museum of the Occult Teleporters coming soon! Finally!

The THING…

ANIMA ALLOCATION – New tab in your ability window, available once you get to level 20. You will get the Combat Triangle, and allow you to allocate your Anima into different roles so you can have a degree of customization when you want to change roles to do anything with your friends or what have you. this will work with the Gear Mangler, and will cost NOTHING!

The Default setting is going to be 90% DPS and 10% survival. Once you reach level 20, you can change this as you see fit.

Gear will have a Base scale balanced around your preferred role. But you can then change your allocation based on your percentage you choose on the allocation tab. This will be interesting to play with once it goes live!

Glyphs, Signets, weapons, and item effects are not affected by this. This will only affect your base stats on your talismans.

Winter event is coming back!

Extra life tomorrow! Check out the Funcom List for participating streamers and give some love!

Any further questions, don’t forget the FunCom Discord channel!

Congrats to Ben and Chatania (Probably got that spelling wrong! Sorry!) getting Married today! And Happy Birthday to Chatania (And Andrew as well)!

That’s it. hope I didn’t miss too much out of the stream. I’ll try to review it later and update this as necessary! thank you for stopping by and I hope to see you in the Secret World!

This post is a few months behind the times, but I’ve noticed the main bulk of my website traffic is for weapons/classes information, so I figured it’s time to start posting these. I’ve been using the past couple months to get acquainted with some of the weapons, and get a feel for what works. Keep in mind this is only MY opinion, but should at least give you a good starting point.

This will NOT be an “END ALL, BE ALL, MAXIMIZE YOUR DPS” guide, rather a good introduction and look at the abilities so you can make your own decisions on what makes the most sense for YOU.

The first weapon I’ll review are Pistols! These are part of the Trickster and Gunslinger Starter Classes Decks, and are primarily a DPS weapon. (If you are not interested in ALL the abilities, you can skip to the bottom of this post to see my recommendations for Main/Off hand uses of this weapon)

The First thing you’ll notice for your Pistols is the ‘Chamber Roulette’ gimmick mechanic that appears on your screen when you have a Pistol equipped.

The Pistol Main’s Prayer: “Praise be to RNGeezus, hallowed be thy name. Grant me the skillz to defeat my foes and not be last on the Damage meters!”

This is a very RNG Based mechanic, but it’s designed to ‘just happen’ so you don’t have to think about what to do. You’ll see two “Six-Cylinders” on-screen and each cylinder is color coded. 3 white chambers, 2 blue chambers, and 1 red chamber per cylinder. When these chambers match, you will get a corresponding Bonus to your pistol abilities for 2-1/2 seconds. So 1/2 of each cylinder is white, 1/3 is blue, and 1/6 is red. Multiply these by each other and your chances for each color match variant would be:

White – 25% – So roughly every 4th shot COULD give you a Low Damage Bonus.

Blue – 11.11% – So roughly every 9th shot, you COULD get a Medium Damage Bonus.

Red – 2.78% – So roughly every 36 shots you COULD get a High Damage Bonus.

Notice that I’ve emphasized COULD in each of those lines. I need to stress that this is NOT a guaranteed thing. You will sometimes go for a full dozen or more shots and STILL not get any bonus whatsoever! Other times, you’ll get 2 blues, a white and a red in rapid succession. All that matters is how well you can appease RNGeezus!

One of the things stated in the DevStreams was that there are items and passives in game that will help change some of this to your advantage. At the time my previous Pistols post was made, we didn’t have any other information to add into it, just what they gave us in their 30 second Speciality Spotlight video. (And that wasn’t much, really…!) Well guess what? Game is live, so now we know what items and abilities are available! Let’s first take a look at some of these items!

PISTOLS:

Anansi Probability Adjusters – Received from Manhatten Exclusion Zone -Whenever you spin the chambers and do not land on a matching set, your next spin is more likely to grant you a matching set. (Let’s hope the increased chances are better than the Loot Lanterns!)

Dual TMP-206 – Future Tech Cache – If you do not have a matching set of chambers, using Active Dodge will grant a Double White set. (Considering how mobile you have to be sometimes, this might work out, but still seems kinda weak to me.)

Heavy Caliber Pistols – Agarthan Cache – You are more likely to roll a Double Red set of chambers, but less likely to roll a Double White or Double Blue set of chambers. I like this idea, but My Trickster has these and doesn’t seem to think the chances are THAT different..! (This Chache is no longer available. Unless someone has them stashed somewhere! Like my alts…>.>)

Misery & Malice – Infernal Cache – Whenever you land on a matching set of chambers, your Pistol Abilities deal 6% more damage for 3 seconds. (This Chache is no longer available. Unless someone has them stashed somewhere! Like my alts…>.>)

Six Shooters – Elite 1-4 Dungeons Boss 6 or Rare Chests – The duration of the damage bonus from a matching set of chambers is increased by 0.5 seconds. (WHY do I only get Mark I versions of these? *Crai* But seriously, this increases your Chamber bonus to 3 seconds, which doesn’t sound like much, but can help a lot when using Unload.)

Soviet CB-3 Annihilators – Weapon Reward Bags – Whenever you critically hit with a Pistol ability while you have a matching set of chambers you deal an additional XXX physical damage. (How’s your Crit rating? I can see these pistols being REALLY good when you are at the Mythic level of Crit ratings…!)

Sov-Tech Harmonizers – Elite 5+ Dungeons, Boss 6 or Rare Chests – Whenever you hit an enemy while you have a Double White set of chambers, you have a 25% chance to be upgraded to Double Blue. Whenever you hit an enemy while you have a Double Blue set of chambers, you have a 15% chance to be upgraded to Double Red. (I Will probably never see these drop…. ever. I mean, I’ll be lucky to ever see Elite 3. Let alone 5+!)

This is NOT a complete list, but these are the more often found special items that have an effect on your Chamber Roulette. And it should give you an idea of what items you can plan on finding in the AH!

For someone like me that likes to use Unload as my main attack, the extra .5 second from the Six Shooters would be a good boost to my DPS! If only I could get something other than a Mark I version of them!

SIGNETS:

There are a Great many Signets out there, but these are the ones that affect Pistols ONLY:

Signet of the Gunslinger – Head – Increases the Damage and Healing of Pistols Elite Abilities by XX%

Signet of the Quick Draw – Head – Reduces the Cooldown of Pistol Elite Abilities by XX%

Signet of the Gambler – Finger –Increases the damage and healing of Pistols Basic Abilities by XX%

Signet of the Outlaw – Neck – Increases the damage and healing of Pistols Power Abilities by X%

PISTOL ABILITIES:

Here is a list of ALL the Abilities available on the Pistol Tree:

“Decisions, decisions…”

BASIC ABILITIES:

Basic Abilities are color-coded WHITE on the weapon tree, and are abilities that use No Energy, but give a lesser effect. These are abilities that should be your filler abilities while you regen Energy used to power your Main abilities. Each weapon has 2 basic abilities. Generally 1 will be a single target and 1 will have an AOE effect.

Ability Name: Hair Trigger

AP Cost: 5

Energy Cost: N/A

Targeting: Single Target

Range: Pistol Range (10m)

Cast Time: Instant

Cool Down: Instant

Effect: Deals XXX Damage to Target (Depends on Level/Attack Power)

Ability Name: Seeking Bullet

AP Cost: 10

Energy Cost: N/A

Targeting: Multi-Target

Range: Pistol Range (10m)

Cast Time: Instant

Cool Down: .5 seconds

Effect: Hits up to 6 enemies for XXX Damage up to 8m from Target

POWER ABILITIES:

Power Abilities are your MAIN abilities, and are color-coded RED on the Weapon Tree. These generally have no cool down and are designed to consume energy to give you your biggest Attack/Heal. Each weapon has 4 Power Abilities. Generally 2 will be Single target, and 2 will be AOE effects.

These Utility abilities are the BLUE colored abilities on your weapon tree, that are designed to be worked into your rotation to help give you a special effect or boost to your abilities. There are 6 of these abilities in each Weapon Tree.

These are the GOLD Colored abilities at the end of each branch of the Weapon Tree. While there are 3 per weapons tree, you may only have 1 elite ability equipped at any time! NOT 1 per weapon, but ONE TOTAL! These are your BIG abilities and are usually your Big Attack/Heal or ‘OH SH*T’ button!

Effect: Hits up to 6 enemies in a 5m radius around Target dealing XXX damage. Applies Exposed and Debilitated. (How long does Debilitated and Exposed Last?)

Ability Name: Bullet Ballet

AP Cost: 20

Energy Cost: 4

Targeting: AOE

Range: 10m

Cast Time: 2 seconds – Channeled

Cool Down: 20 seconds

Effect: Hit up to 6 enemies in a 10m area around you 10x’s in 2 seconds dealing XXX Damage and slowing their movement speed. (How long does the Slow work?)

CAPSTONES:

Each Weapon has a ‘CAPSTONE’ that you can purchase after you have bought EVERY OTHER Ability on the page. The CAPSTONE will give you a small permanent stat bonus for each level of capstone you buy. That bonus is 15 Health, 10 Attack Rating, and 10 Heal Rating per level of Capstone you purchase. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? The trick is that you can buy one level of Capstone per weapon you have Capstoned! So if you have 3 weapons Capstoned, you can buy 3 Capstones on each of those weapons! Now, you have 3 Capstones on 3 weapons available to you! That’s 9x the bonus!

Now think about the fact that there are 9 weapons in the game, so that gives you 135 Health, 90 Attack Rating, and 90 Heal Rating per weapon, so that gives a Total Potential Bonus of 1215 Health, 810 Attack Rating, and 810 Heal Rating if you can buy EVERY Capstone for Every Weapon! Now those little numbers don’t look so bad, do they?!

Just wait till they add more weapons…!

Additionally, this doesn’t really affect game play, but when you purchase a capstone for a weapon, you are given a faction colored uniform based on the weapon you just capstoned. Pistols, grants you the Crusader outfit. (My favorite is the Illuminati colored one!)

PASSIVE ABILITIES:

There are two types of Passive abilities. The small round abilities are ‘Permanent Passives’ that are applied to your character when you purchase them, and will stay with you regardless of what weapon you have equipped. DPS weapons have one set of these Perma-Passives, Tank Weapons have another set of Perma-Passives, and Healing weapons have their own set of Perma-Passives that they follow. For Pistols, being a DPS weapon, the total Passive Stat Bonuses available if you buy all of the passives on the page are as follows:

Attack Power

+168

Crit Power

+210

Crit Rating

+126

Def Rating

+0

Evade rating

+0

Heal Rating

+0

Health

+333

Hit Rating

+126

Protection

+251

The OTHER type of Passives are the ones that will affect your specific weapon. Some of them affect a single ability, and others will take effect on all abilities that use that weapon. There are generally 22 of this type of Passive per weapon.

Here is a list of all the Passives for Pistols:

Passive Name

Works with Active Ability:

SP Cost

Effect

Second Wind

ALL

5

Restores 3.5% Health when Chambers Match up

High Roller

Controlled Shooting

10

Increases damage by 10% as each enemy is hit.

Lethal Aim

Flourish

10

Increases Damage by 15% for 6 seconds

Holdout

Unload

15

33% chance to NOT spin chambers if you already have a Matched set after using ‘Unload’

Royal Flush

All In

20

When using ‘All In’, if you have Matching Chambers, target and nearby enemies are dealt extra Damage. Double White Applies Exposed.

Stacked Deck

Full House

10

Increases duration of ‘Full house’ to 5 sec (+2 sec)

Rehabilitation

Clean Slate

10

Increases Healing of ‘Clean Slate’ if ally is cleansed of an effect.

Mulligan

Six line

15

resets cool down of ‘Six Line’ if you don’t get a red set

Focused Fire

Kill Blind

20

Increases Damage of Kill Blind to XXX. Will grant White Set if you do not have a Matching Set of chambers

If you haven’t used a Pistol Ability in last 4 seconds, your Right Chamber will match your Left Chamber

MAIN HAND RECOMMENDATIONS:

Single Target – If you are using this weapon as a Main hand, I like to use Unload as my Main attack. It hits the target every half second for 2.5 seconds (5 hits) for XXX Damage per hit. Each of these hits CAN Crit! BUT…. That is NOT to say that you should just SPAM this ability. I’ve actually found that MY DPS increases if I use my Basic attack until I have a Matched set of chambers and then hit Unload! Because EACH of those hits while your chambers match will get the Roulette Bonus!

If you are out Solo Questing, sure, go ahead and spam it on single mobs. It will die before you run out of energy anyway, and no one cares about DPS on regular quest mobs. But if you run into a tougher mob like a Champion, or group boss, or you’re on a Dungeon/Raid Boss, then you will want to be more selective about when to hit Unload.

What you can do is get yourself a Addon like ‘Combat Statistics” that will show you your own DPS, and Test it out on the Target Dummies in Agartha. Try Spamming vs hitting it on a Matched Chamber set. You’ll see the difference!

There may be some concern that this is a 5 energy ability vs Dual Shot being a 3 point ability. Wouldn’t you get more ‘Bang for your Buck’ using the lower energy ability? Dual Shot is an Instant Cast/Reuse ability, so you can spam it quickly and run out of energy in about 7 seconds. Unload takes 2.5 seconds to channel, so by the time you’ve started your second cast, you’ve already regen’d half your energy cost. If you use a basic ability in between until you have matched chambers, you will almost never run out of energy with this ability as your Main Weapon/Main Attack!

AOE – Controlled Shooting is a great low energy ability with a short cast time. Your alternative is Charged Blast, which is a 5 energy ability, and would take only three seconds to run out of energy. thankfully, AOE fights don’t seem to be a thing, where you will need to fight multiple mobs at different times during a fight. (Outside of the odd Darkness War – Boss 5!) So at the beginning of a fight, you can use whatever ability you want, it’s really up to your preference. I prefer Controlled Shooting, as it seems to be more Energy Pool Friendly.

BASIC – I tend to use Hair Trigger for my basic unless I know I’m going into a fight that will have a LOT of AOE needed. Then I might swap out for Seeking Bullet. Feel free to swap for whichever one you need at any given time. But Hair Trigger should be good enough for you 90% of the time.

OFF HAND RECOMMENDATIONS:

As an Off Hand Weapon, I generally prefer using 3 point abilities so I don’t run out of energy as quickly, and if I do, it won’t take as long to be able to regen enough energy to use it again. But depending on what I’m looking at doing, exceptions can be made.

Single Target – I tend to use Dual Shot. It’s a Low energy ability and will give me plenty of shots to fire with minimal time needed to regen energy to fire again. It also doesn’t take away from my Main Hand weapon as much.

AOE – In this case, here’s my exception: Charged Blast. This is my Off Hand, so I’m limited on time that this weapon will be active at all. I can Burst Damage a group of Mobs with this ability and then go back to my main weapon to finish them off. Alternatively, I CAN use Controlled Shooting if I feel I’m energy starved, but let’s face it, secondary weapons are mostly for utility now. As a Trickster, my pistols are secondary, as Chaos will keep agro for me. So I can use my pistols occasionally, usually only if I’m at range from my target. And have plenty of time to regen the energy while I’m using my Main hand weapon.

SPECIAL ABILITIES:

These are the utility abilities that can be used to help give you a Boost to your DPS. What to use? and when?

Flourish vs Clean Slate – Flourish sounds like a great idea… gives you four energy if you are in an energy starved state, and will cleanse one debilitating effect off of you. But I tend to find that I don’t NEED the extra energy, so the Heal from Clean Slate tends to more than make up for that! Also, Clean Slate works on the Entire Group! In addition, I’ve found a number of fights where I will get hit with more than one effect and the cleansing of 3 effects from Clean Slate works REALLY well..! Also, if you take Clean Slate, you can use Rehabilitation as a Passive to increase the healing when cleansing an ability! I tend to use Clean Slate when Soloing or questing with a group. This is a great option to use Pistols as an Offhand for healing.

Full House – DPS Utility of Choice. Use on each cooldown for a Double Blue set of Chambers.

Six-Line – If you take this one, also pick up Mulligan for a passive, as it will reset the cooldown if you don’t get a Double Red.

As a DPS, if I want to use one of the Pistol Elites, I’d usually use ALL IN. It’s a Single Target ability and let’s face it, single targets is where DPS REALLY gets to shine! It’s also where DPS gets to gauge their effectiveness most reliably.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a use for BULLET BALLET! If you get into a AOE Heavy fight, say the 5th boss in Darkness Wars, Bullet Ballet can come in handy with the adds that join in. And since the Boss doesn’t like to stick around long before jumping up top to throw bombs at us, might as well slot something that will be more effective!

TRICK SHOT is more of a situational ability. As a Trickster tank, I might like this to apply Debilitated and Exposed. If my tank doesn’t have anything to apply these already, then I may take it just to be the utility DPS. OR, If I’m soloing content, I might like it’s ability to slow my enemies. (Not to mention this can also be useful in PVP! But who does that anyway?)

One thing of note for Trick Shot, I’m not entirely sure how long the Debilitated/Exposed effects last. Less that 20 seconds for the cooldown, I’m sure!

In any case, the elite abilities are a Flavor of the Minute and can be swapped out according to your taste.

“You are cursed with Free Will…”

PASSIVES:

As for Offhand passives, BE ADVISED: With our decreased Passive Slots (TSW to SWL) from 7 to 5, we have to be VERY choosy over what Passives to use. It is generally not advised to slot more than 1 passive for a weapon that is NOT your Main Hand weapon. (I do not slot ANY Offhand Passives if I can avoid it!) The reason being, with Double the Energy recharge time, you will most likely NOT be able to make enough use of an Off-Hand weapon to make slotting the passives and taking away from your main hand weapon worth it. There will be times this is proven false, but again, this is just a ‘101 course’ for Pistol Abilities. I’m not Theory Crafting for the top 1%’ers out there.

So with that being said, I MIGHT use BLAST CRATER, if I’m looking at fights with lots of Mobs, OR FATAL SHOT if I think I’ll get some good hits in from my Dual Shot. Again, these are situational, and you need to evaluate what kind of fights you are going into and what your Role is before choosing these over a Main Hand Passive.

As for Main-Hand Pistols Passives, It makes sense to use the passive that was specifically designed to be used with your Main Power Ability. For me, Holdout is designed to be used with Unload. I may have Controlled Shooting as another attack in my arsenal, but unless I’m going into AOE heavy fights, slotting a Passive for an AOE/Multi-target ability doesn’t seem worth it in my eyes.

For my other passive slots, I tend to take the other passives that are designed to work with all abilities:

Heavy Caliber

Double Down

Jackpot

WinStreak

There are other Passives that work with all Pistol abilities, but they are situational:

Second Wind – Only if I need extra healing. Usually only if I’m soloing.

Flechette Rounds – Only useful in AOE Heavy Environments.

Beginner’s Luck – Useful at beginning of fight.

Fully Loaded – Useful at beginning of fight.

Fixed game – Useful at beginning of fight.

So I would NOT recommend any of these unless you’ve got a build for every possibility and are constantly swapping to Min-Max the hell out of EVERY encounter! But no one does that…. I don’t think…

Maybe that’s why I’m not in Lag Spike…>.>

So that’s it! My first In Depth look into one of the weapons for SWL. I hope you enjoyed this, and maybe learned something from it! Also, I’m looking to do Chaos next, since it’s the other weapon that I know best. But I also want to know what YOU want to see me review next? As usual, please leave any comments below.